Volume 5: Gamma-20, Chapter 5.15

While we made our way back towards the rest of the crew in the command center, I leaned over to Zyno in the hallway.

“So, what all gear did you pack along?” I asked.

Zyno shrugged, lifting the strap of his bag up on his shoulder more, “Just some sensors and a few tools I brought along, nothing super helpful by itself, but I figure I might be able to rig something up that could help us scan the area for potential threats.” He said, then gave me a meaningful look.

I knew what he was saying, wanting to create something that would be able to detect a Predazoan onboard, but of course there was no technology in the Empire that could see through the Predazoan camouflage.

“You know, I was working on a contract for a mission on the planet Vyrane, and there was some warlord who’d been brainwashing the local population, turned them all violent—made them into these berserker fighters. The locals fighting against this force created a scanner that could read a person’s eyes to see if they were brainwashed or not.” I said delicately.

Zyno nodded along, “Yeah, I read up about that, interesting technology that could see through some exotic form of camouflage.”

I looked over at him, “Think you could replicate the device?”

Zyno smirked, “Look who you’re talking to.”

“Are you thinking someone on our crew’s been

brainwashed

?” Reim demanded, once again nearly sounding hysterical.

I tried to wave her off quickly, “No no, just working through all the possibilities; the more theories we can disprove, the safer we’ll be.”

Honestly, none of us would be safe if we couldn’t confirm whether someone on the

Jessipie-90

crew was an assimilated puppet. Aside from trying to get the systems fixed so we could get the ship moving again or ask for help from

The Radiance

, that would be priority one.

“Speaking of theories, I heard you talking with the good doctor out in the hallway while we were collecting the gear in the lifepod; were you able to work out any reasonable hypothesis on what’s been going on?” Bryx inquired.

I sighed, “Not really—nothing helpful. I’ve been on some crazy missions and seen some weird shit, but I still don’t know what’s actually happening here.”

Bryx nodded, then let it drop, but I could see he was still curious what all I was thinking about what Gamma-20 might be doing. Problem was I honestly had no idea, and while I had a theory on what she’d done with the robots and the first few dead bodies, I was lost on her next steps and couldn’t even begin to guess what she was doing now.

Worst case scenario: she was disguised as some crewmember, slowly breaking us all apart from within.

“I radioed ahead to the captain, told him your mercenary team had some weapons you’d be willing to divide amongst the rest of the crew.” Lummy confirmed, then looked over at me, “Have you really had genetic modifications performed on your body?”

“Yeah, why, is that really so strange?” I asked.

Lummy shrugged, “Cybernetic enhancements are much more common, safer and easier to regulate. Most genetic alterations can come with significant and unknown side effects since you’re rewriting your natural biology, some people find the idea heretical.”

I smirked, “Are you such a person; you consider me a dangerous heretic?”

She laughed and shook her head, “No, of course not, just wondering what kind of life you must’ve lived to go to such drastic lengths for power, and now you’re just living and working as a mercenary.”

“For the most part the only normalized genetic modifications are largely cosmetic, or alterations performed so a person can receive cybernetic enhancements. Considering how final and limited genetic modifications are, and how customizable and variable cybernetic ones are, it’s understandable why people stick with the cybernetic enhancements.” Reim added.

I shrugged, “My body, my choice, right?”

Zyno rolled his eyes, “We still live in an Empire founded on laws and rules, Adam, and the point is genetic modifications are almost impossible to regulate, and incredibly easy to abuse so it makes breaking Imperial laws easier.”

Lummy nodded along, “Right, like a lot of pirate crews mix genetic and cybernetic enhancements because they don’t care about Imperial laws.” She looked over at me, clearly hiding a grin, “Did you maybe live a past life as a pirate before you turned to honest mercenary work?”

I laughed at that, “Honest mercenary work, well that’s a laugh.” I shrugged, “No, not me; being I come from some random, backwater planet that’s barely made a foray into space on the fringes of the Empire, I suppose I’m just living life fast and loose out here.”

Reim shook her head and sighed, “I can’t imagine why you would ever need to warn women not to fall in love with you, living that kind of idiotic, reckless lifestyle.” She glared at me, “Someone would have to be lacking in brain cells to get involved with you.”

“Oh no, I can definitely see the appeal.” Willa said boldly.

I bowed to her delicately, “Why thank you, Willa.”

In that weirdly monstrous, amazonian way, Willa was pretty sexy herself, despite having that monster face, and I wouldn’t shy away from asking Eve to take the form of some strange, giant alien woman the next time we wanted to get weird with it.

What was funny though was the idea of the monster alien woman being attracted to the normal, rather boring human I was.

Well, as I heard time and again, sexuality was totally free out in the Empire, but of course all I wanted was to be free to love my Evie in peace.

Our little party returned to the command center to find a small collection of people still there, working on their tablets or the computer part of the communications systems, talking into their comms as though relaying orders from someone working down in the basement on the other side of the communications system.

Bryx brought the crate of weapons and set it down before Gadow, and he almost looked surprised when he saw it was real.

“So, you’re really okay with sharing your weapons and gear with us?” He asked.

Bryx nodded, “Like you said before, we’re all in this together.”

Gadow smiled, then he and Fierra looked into the crate, and each grabbed a pistol and proton blade.

“We don’t have much in the way of security gear; a few pistols, some stun guns, and some plasma torches.” Gadow looked at the gun and sword in his hand, then sighed and put them back in the box, “To be honest, we’re not really trained for combat or even defense; I don’t know what we can do with them.” He looked over at Brunt, “You and Toku are our only security officers left, you should make sure you take whatever gear you need first.”

Brunt patted the pistol at his side, “I’ve already got a gun, so I’d say it’d be a good thing to have the rest of our crew armed just in case they do run into any crazed stowaway.”

“Or a brainwashed crewmember, if you would listen to Adam’s theory.” Reim said, almost like she was accusing me of something.

Gadow quirked up an eyebrow and looked over at me, “You have a theory on what’s going on?”

Fierra crossed her arms and glared at me, “We already warned you we wouldn’t tolerate any division among our ranks.”

I held my hands up peacefully, “Just an idea, I have a history with a mission where a warlord was brainwashing the local population into becoming ultra-violent. I’m not saying anyone’s in doubt now, but it’s something we

do

need to consider.” I gestured to Zyno, “My boy here should be able to rig up a scanner to detect to see if anyone’s being controlled at all, no need to say anything until he—”

Gadow held up a hand to stop me, “I appreciate your concern and the fact you want to be proactive, but I don’t want to even put it in my people’s head there might be someone among them who’s being brainwashed or mind-controlled, that’s almost worse than just being a traitor.”

“Captain, I understand your concern and your need to keep the peace, but if there’s a threat among us we can’t well ignore—” Bryx started.

But Gadow cut him off too, “I don’t think

you

understand how difficult it’s been keeping the crew together—working together. 20 years, not a single problem under my watch, but ever since we were stranded and people started dying, every day has been a struggle to keep morale up. When you’re out in the vast emptiness of space, hope will drain away in a matter of seconds, and people start seriously contemplating taking the easy way out.” His gaze turned hard when he looked at our team, “Make no mistake, I will do

everything

in my power to keep people from turning on each other, even if it means we have to let the wolf stay amongst the sheep for a time until we can be absolutely sure there’s no other alternative.”

I could appreciate what Gadow was dealing with, but he didn’t realize that wolf was an eldritch abomination cosmic horror who could consume entire planets, let alone a small crew of people stranded in a deep space freighter.

I crossed my arms and looked at the captain with a level gaze, “How bad did it get?” I asked simply.

Gadow met my eyes without blinking, “

Bad

. First there was the infighting, people took sides and minor squabbles long since squashed were brought up again full force. Some people were expelled from those groups, and in their isolation, they turned to drastic measures.” He looked around at the rest of his crew working, as though debating what all to admit to us, “Some people needed to be taken into protective custody until we could restore order.”

So, things got so bad there were even suicide risks—sounded like more than one at least. I could imagine how badly Gadow wanted to avoid things taking that dark turn again, needing to keep everyone in groups working together for safety, but also to keep people from feeling too isolated.

I nodded once, “Listen, I can understand we need to keep order and prevent all that infighting, so I would suggest Zyno work on some sensors to see if he can…” I waved my hand through the air, trying to come up with a good explanation, “Detect any anomalies on the ship—find your stowaway.” I leaned in closer to Gadow, “No one needs to know what all he’s working on—hell, I wouldn’t even begin to understand it.”

Gadow kept his level gaze on me, weighing his options; on one hand, he needed to keep morale up and prevent the infighting so people wouldn’t turn on each other, but on the other hand he still needed to work on getting his people out of this mess safely.

I really didn’t envy his position at all.

Gadow turned to Zyno, “What would you require to create this scanner?”

Zyno looked at me, then back at Gadow, “I have some gear with me I just need to work on putting it all together, but I’d need some extra tools to get it working right. If you have something like an engineering or equipment repair deck, I could figure things out from there.” Then he shrugged, “A few more hands to help out wouldn’t hurt either.”

Gadow shook his head, “We don’t want anyone going anywhere alone now, so you wouldn’t need to worry about that.” He crossed his arms then, “But weren’t you going to check out our warp reactor, see if that was something you could fix?”

Shit, Zyno was starting to sound like the MVP since we needed him all over, but unfortunately there was only one of him, and he probably couldn’t do both jobs at once.

Which was more important, the security of discovering if anyone was assimilated, or getting the warp reactor working so we could get the hell out of here?

I looked over at Zyno, “Which do you think would be the faster project?”

Zyno waved me off quickly, “The scanner for sure, that might only take me a few hours.”

Fierra stepped forward, “Why don’t we have him take a look at the warp reactor first so he can at least get it in his mind what might need to be done, then we can work on the scanner since he already has that planned out.” She reasoned.

Zyno nodded, “Yeah, probably the best of both worlds.”

Gadow looked over at Fierra, “You’re sure we should go down this road? If people find out—”

Fierra put her hand on Gadow’s shoulder, “But they won’t; the man’s just working on some scanner that’ll help him find our crazed stowaway.” She looked at everyone else in our group, “Right?”

Everyone nodded their agreement, our team not wanting to create any trouble overstepping anything, and the few crew members of

Jessipie-90

in on our secret not wanting to get back into all that terrible infighting.

But we needed to know for sure if there actually was a wolf hiding among us, no one could deny that.

Gadow looked around at us, seeing everyone was clearly on board with the plan, then let out a long, weary sigh, and I swear every time he did that, the man looked like he aged another year.

“Alright, we’ll grab a few more of our engineers, then head down to the warp reactor, see if anything looks salvageable to you.” Gadow said, sounding like he himself was fighting low morale.